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Penny Wise, Printer Foolish: 10 Ways Not to Save Money on Printing

Faced with a choice of two printers, both of which give you acceptable speed, quality, paper handling and other features, it may seem obvious that the less expensive printer is the better bargain, but that's not necessarily true. If the more expensive printer has a lower cost per page, it may be the less expensive choice in the long run.

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Penny Wise, Printer Foolish: 10 Ways Not to Save Money on Printing - Pick a Printer by Cost Per Page

Picking by initial price on the one hand or cost per page on the other can be summed up as ignoring TCO (total cost of ownership). Yes, it takes time, energy and work to figure out the TCO for each printer you-

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Penny Wise, Printer Foolish: 10 Ways Not to Save Money on Printing - Focus on the Cost of Cartridges

When you consider consumable costs as part of your buying decision, don't just compare the cost per cartridge. What matters is the cost per page -- the cartridge cost divided by the number of pages it prints. If a cartridge prints enough pages, that shockingly high price for the cartridge will translate to a low cost per page.

Choosing ink jet cartridges can be tricky, because cartridges have a shelf life and nozzles can clog, forcing you to throw out the cartridge. If you print every day, the best deal is probably the most expensive cartridge. If you often go without printing for days or weeks, the least expensive cartridge may be the better choice.

Getting an inexpensive ink jet to supplement a monochrome laser is one way to get inexpensive color, but the price for color lasers is getting low enough that you may be able to pay the same price to get both the monochrome performance you want and color in a single color laser -- especially after you consider the laser-

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Penny Wise, Printer Foolish: 10 Ways Not to Save Money on Printing - Outsource What You Can Print Yourself

More and more color lasers today offer output quality suitable for marketing materials such as trifold brochures and one-page glossy handouts. If you try to save money by buying monochrome lasers and outsourcing this sort of material for small quantities (and high prices per page), it may be costing you more than buying your own color laser and printing it yourself.